Tobacco is usually harvested for curing the leaves by impaling a group of tobacco plants through the stalks on a pointed tobacco stick and placing the loaded sticks on racks in tobacco curing barns. Manual harvesting of tobacco plants is very laborious. A bundle of pointed tobacco sticks, or spikes are distributed between a pair of tobacco rows. Each plant stalk is cut manually with a knife, hatchet or the like; and the severed stalk is impaled upon a vertically held stick. When about six stalks have been so loaded, the loaded stick is either staked in or laid down on the ground for subsequent gathering and transport to a curing barn.
In order to reduce the amount of manual labor required in tobacco harvesting, machines have been devised for facilitating such operations. In the simplest of such machines, a stick holding device is provided which is loaded manually from time to time from a container holding a supply of such sticks. As the machine proceeds through the field, a cutter device severs the tobacco stalk, and the plant is lifted and manually impaled on the stick. When the required number of stalks have been impaled, the loaded stick is dropped or dumped onto the ground. With such machines, the manual labor involved is only minimally reduced. Further, the dumping of the loaded sticks onto the ground results in damage to the tobacco leaves such that the usable yield is reduced.
More complex tobacco harvesters have been developed wherein each stalk is grasped, cut, and impaled on a tobacco stick mechanically. When the required number of stalks have been impaled, the loaded stick is ejected. One known harvester rotates the plants from vertical to a transverse horizontal position prior to impalement. Such harvesters are successful in reducing the manual labor involved in tobacco harvesting. However, the problem of leaf damage when the loaded stick is ejected is still present. Further, because the stalks are impaled directly onto the tobacco stick, the stick supplying mechanism must be close to the impalement mechanism or, alternatively, the stick must be conveyed into the impalement mechanism, such that such machines are mechanically complex.
Another known tobacco harvester solves the leaf damage and stick feeding problems by providing a rotary arrangement of four radially positioned stick holders. As each stick is loaded, the mechanism rotates an unloaded stick into place. However, the unloaded sticks are manually emplaced in the holders, and the stalk loaded sticks are manually transferred from the holders, presumably, to a vehicle with a stick holding rack thereon which travels along the tobacco rows with the harvesting machine.